China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said that the leaders of India and China reached “an important consensus” that the two countries should be partners, and Beijing hoped Saturday’s (September 12, 2026) meeting in New Delhi would see both countries take forward ties “without stagnation or backsliding”.

Mr. Wang, who accompanied Chinese President Xi Jinping on his visit to New Delhi for the BRICS Summit, told State media, briefing them on the talks, that the two leaders held “a candid, in-depth exchange of views on issues affecting the countries of a strategic, long-term, and direction-setting nature, and reached a most important consensus that China and India should be partners.”

He quoted Mr. Xi as saying that “under the strategic guidance of the two countries’ leaders, China-India relations have gradually emerged from a low point, progressing from a ‘restart’ to a ‘renewed height.’

Mr. Wang said the “normalisation and improvement of China-India relations has been hard-earned, and that this progress deserves to be cherished.”

Following the third meeting between the two leaders in three years, he hoped India “will join China in translating the leaders’ shared consensus into action”.

“Both nations should remain partners rather than rivals, and advance bilateral relations steadily forward without stagnation or backsliding,” Mr. Wang added.

His comments on “backsliding” speak to the view among some Chinese officials that the normalisation process over the past three years had unfolded in fits and starts, with slow progress on resuming exchanges.

India has said that maintaining peace and tranquility on the borders provided the basis for resuming exchanges, as both sides emerged from a four-year freeze in relations. Ties have gradually normalised after the two leaders met in Kazan in October 2024.

Mr. Wang repeated China’s view that “the border issue should be placed in the appropriate position within the broader context of the bilateral relationship”.

“Dialogue and cooperation should remain the prevailing trend,” he said, “and both nations should accelerate their respective development and national renewal.”

China on Sunday (August 9, 2026) slammed India’s latest move of identifying 27 locations in Arunachal Pradesh by their standard names on its official map as “self-deception which runs counter to the improving momentum in bilateral relations and could complicate efforts to properly handle border issues.”

In response to frequent attempts by China to rename some places in Arunachal Pradesh, India on Friday (August 7, 2026) formally identified 27 places — including land, passes, a lake and a monument — in the border State by their standard names on the official Indian map.

The Global Times, China’s Communist Party-run newspaper carried a report which said, “China has been carrying out standardization of geographical names in the region for a long time. At a time when China-India relations are showing signs of improvement and leaders from both countries are expected to engage through multilateral platforms, any unilateral action by India that escalates the border situation shows no point and will not serve the broader interests of bilateral relations.” Qian Feng, director of the Research Department at Tsinghua University’s National Strategy Institute, was quoted.

Mr. Qian said India should avoid turning border issue into a larger dispute, as such actions could stifle the improving political ties between the two countries, the report further said.

“China does not recognize Arunacla pradesh”

According to the report, Since 2017, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs has released six batches of standardized names for locations, with a total of 112 names announced as of April 2026. These names cover villages, mountain passes, rivers and peaks, accompanied by standardized Chinese and Tibetan names as well as geographic coordinates. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at a routine press briefing on April 14 that China does not recognize Arunachal Pradesh.

Quoting Mr. Guo, the report added, “China-India relations are generally stable at the moment. China’s commitment to improving and growing China-India relations has not changed. We hope the two sides will work in the same direction and act more in ways conducive to bilateral relations.”

The newspaper also added that, India’s latest naming of 27 locations is a unilateral administrative move and does not alter the legal status of the area, quoting Guo Xuetang, a professor at the center for South Asia and Indian Ocean Studies under Shanghai International Studies University.

According to Mr. Guo Xuetang, India’s move is an attempt to strengthen its claim of control over the area and create additional leverage in future boundary negotiations. However, such actions have no practical meaning and will only undermine the atmosphere for negotiations between the two countries, the report added.

The report further said that Mr. Guo said the only way to resolve the China-India boundary issue is through equal negotiations and a fair settlement based on historical and legal principles, while unilateral actions that create tensions or change the status quo will only harm mutual trust and border stability.

India-China ties reached a “new level of improvement” after the recent meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping in Tianjin, Chinese Ambassador to India Xu Feihong said on Tuesday. He said the two countries should not let the boundary dispute define ties between them.

Speaking at a function in Delhi to celebrate China’s National Day, Mr. Xu, who was joined by Arun Kumar Chatterjee, Secretary, External Affairs Ministry, said this year marks 76 years of the Communist Party government and 75 years since the establishment of India-China diplomatic relations and had seen a major improvement in high-level engagements and people-to-people ties.

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Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi have met twice in the past year, and both sides have agreed to restore flights, visas, and other bilateral mechanisms after the four-year-freeze on ties due to the military stand-off at the Line of Actual Control.

“Bridging differences through dialogue has always been the important key to advancing China-India relations,” Mr. Xu said, adding that the two countries “should not allow the boundary question that was left over from the past to define the current China-India relations, nor let specific differences affect comprehensive bilateral cooperation”. During the LAC stand-off, New Delhi had maintained that normal bilateral relations were not possible without normalcy at the boundary.

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“Over the past 75 years, despite the ups and downs, the relationship is overwhelmingly defined by friendly cooperation,” Mr. Xu told a gathering of diplomats and Indian invitees at the event.

According to the envoy, the Chinese Embassy has issued 2,65,000 visas to Indian citizens in 2025 and resumed the facilitation of pilgrims to Kailash-Mansarovar, following which 700 official pilgrims and 20,000 private pilgrims undertook the yatra this year. Mr. Xu said that between January and August, bilateral trade in goods grew 10.4% year-on-year to $102 billion. 

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These were Mr. Xu’s first public comments since Mr. Modi’s visit to China on August 30, seven years after his last visit amid a thaw in relations. Last month, the envoy had criticised the U.S. for  “bullying” India by imposing 50% tariffs and expressed China’s support to India to shore up the international trading order.

India and U.S. have since resumed trade negotiations, although the U.S. tariffs have not been rolled back. Referring to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit that Mr. Modi attended, Mr. Xu said Mr. Xi had proposed a “Global Governance Initiative”, calling for “adherence to sovereign equality, abiding by international rule of law, practicing multilateralism, advocating the people-centred approach”.